


Honorable Discharge

by ZeeCatfish



Category: Homestuck
Genre: Gen, Petstuck
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-09-04
Updated: 2012-09-04
Packaged: 2017-11-13 13:28:33
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,065
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/504018
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ZeeCatfish/pseuds/ZeeCatfish
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Ex-military Eridan Ampora has an honorable discharge hanging on his wall, dreams of battlefields that haunt him around every turn and a pair of trolls who scurry around his house and snoop in his things when they think he isn't looking while they wait for their own scars to fade. Somehow, he thinks that that's enough.</p><p>Inspired by <a href="http://archiveofourown.org/works/477092/chapters/827980">Unwanted Free Ugly Troll</a>.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Honorable Discharge

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [Unwanted Free Ugly Troll](https://archiveofourown.org/works/477092) by [orphan_account](https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account). 



> I think petstuck belongs to [Laylah](http://archiveofourown.org/users/Laylah/pseuds/Laylah), and UFUT is [coldhope](http://archiveofourown.org/users/coldhope/pseuds/coldhope)'s, so I'm basically just messing around in someone else's playground. Still, it was interesting to write; I've been wanting to use a military background for a human Eridan for a while now.  
> I think coldhope mentioned she doesn't write Vriska, and I don't actually know if that applies to Gamzee as well, but here's my fanfiction-for-a-fanfiction on their situation.

_Gunfire thunders in the distance, but all you see is white. You should be aiming at that jackass over there, the one with the red bandanna tied around his mouth who’s been throwing cocktails at you, so why are you lying down, why does everything around you sound like you’re hearing it through a filter? Your body feels oddly light, and yet you can’t even get yourself to sit up, and you’re hearing the worried voices of your squad buzzing all around you so something has to be up, why can’t you focus? You’re supposed to be in charge here, what kind of field commander can’t even listen to his own soldiers?_

_You catch him from the corner of your eye, a dark blur against the bleak, dusty surroundings. Warning shots, you remember. You’re supposed to use warning shots. You’re not the bad guys here, no matter what they like to think, but if you don’t scare them off they’ll do something stupid with consequences that’ll make that time you went all white in the head and punched the teeth out of some twiggy little fucker back in college look like child’s play and you’re here to protect these people. But your arm is sluggish and your aim is piss-poor, and it takes the world just to move enough to take aim._

_His head explodes, and the world is red._

Suddenly your body feels solid again, heavy and very very real in the sudden darkness around you. Your mind is in Afghanistan, in an isolated little village held hostage by a group of extremist kids who piss their pants at the sight of a gun before gathering their balls and flinging the biggest shit they’ve got back at you. You respect that kind of crazy, that kind of conviction, but orders are orders and no matter how you look at it these fuckers are dangerous.  


It takes you a moment to realise that the red letters flashing at you from your left aren’t the eyes of the devil coming to take you away or the countdown to an explosion but just your alarm clock. And just like that reality crashes back down and you turn around in your warm, comfortable bed with a groan, because fucking shit it’s three in the morning and you do not want to be awake.

This time there really is a pair of eyes staring at you, and you jump back instinctively, grasping beside you for a gun that the rational part of you knows won’t be there.

“Jesus son a’ a dick, Gam, don’t do that,” you breathe out as you try to swallow around the heavy thumping of your heart in your throat. Gamzee blinks at you slowly, eyes half lidded and sleepy, and an uncomfortable twist in your gut tells you he’s faking it. You’ve always been told kids test their parents for boundaries, and while trolls and children aren’t quite the same you think he might be testing you for something.

“A brother was all up and making wicked sorts of noises in his sleep, motherfucker,” he tells you in that odd, fluctuating whisper he sometimes uses. It makes the hairs on the back of your neck stand on end. You realise he’s not wearing his paint, that you can see the long, jagged scars that run over his face. 

“So decided to plant your ass right next to my head?” you ask, a little more sharply than you intended to. It’s early, and Gamzee knows full well you’re not at your best on nights like this one, when your scars are aching and your thoughts are elsewhere and your honorable discharge weighs more than the universe itself. You think that might be why he’s doing this though. Maybe he’s looking for verification, maybe he just wants to know that he’s not the only one who’s seen the light at the darkest of hours. Or who knows, maybe he just wants to see how you’ll react.

“I would have been motherfucking down for waking you, my brother,” he tells you, and even though it’s three AM and today is already shaping up to be complete and utter shit you feel a little spark of pride, because you’re pretty damn fucking certain he’s never adressed any of his old owners that intimately. You aren’t brothers, not even close, but you take it as approval, a sign that maybe one day even fucked up little messes like Gamzee, who’ve been dragged through the worst sludge humanity has to offer might consider you family. “But last time this motherfucker went and got his waking up on you went and motherfucking brought the wicked rage down on my face, remember?”

“Last time,” you tell him with an exasperated groan, “you tried fuckin’ wakin’ me by sitting down on my face. An’ I already apologised for that.” In a fit of panic you’d lashed out and slugged Gamzee in the cheek. You’d felt so guilty afterwards you’d actually allowed him to eat nothing but pie for a week, and couldn’t properly look him in the eye for even longer. Gamzee isn’t usually vindictive, and you realise you’d silently assumed he’d let it go. Apparently he’s still holding a grudge after all.

“Awww man no, a brother don’t need to motherfucking apologise to lil’ old me,” he tells you, and you’re not sure if he’s saying that to make you feel guilty all over again or because he genuinely feels you don’t need to apologise. Knowing yourself and the way you tend to assume the worst in people you guess it’s probably the latter. Be told often enough you’re not worth an apology and you’ll start believing it, and Gamzee’s been told that plenty. 

You decide against arguing for now. Maybe another time, when you’re not tired and shaking, when you can properly form an argument and can be completely sure it’ll be the man talking, and not the soldier. You raise a hand, take a moment to appreciate how wonderfully light it is, how properly it works, and pat the little troll on the head. He flinches and gives you a wary look, but after a second he lets you, even leans against you.

When you try to sit up a little you wince, feeling the muscles in your stomach pull and stretch. You’ve mostly recovered, physically at least, and sometimes you secretly wonder if there's any chance at all you might return to the battlefield some day, finish what you started. But there’s no escaping the facts, and the facts tell you you’re lucky to be alive and walking at all, that you've made it to hell's gate and back, but it cost you and the devil doesn't hand back his prizes. Your psychiatrist tells you some of the aches might be psychosomatic, but for now you’re sticking to the pain meds. 

With a groan you force yourself out of bed and head towards the bathroom, to the little prescription pill bottle that’ll at least allow you a few more hours of sleep. Gamzee trails behind you with a silence grace that is sometimes hard to imagine on him, when you see him during daytime being completely enthralled by some kid’s cartoon or fingering the cookie dough he’s thrown together. 

You’re not supposed to take your prescription on an empty stomach, and since your stomach already had to live through being mutilated once you figure you’d better play it safe and be a good boy, stick to the doctor’s orders, so instead of swallowing them down on water alone you shake out a single capsule and set out to make yourself something to eat. The last traces of sleepiness are already vanishing and you reckon it’ll be tough getting back to sleep afterwards, but the chances of you getting back to sleep in the first place were always relatively low anyway, and it’s not like you have to leave your house to work.

The moment you enter the kitchen you realise something is off. It’s perfectly quiet and on the first glance nothing looks out of place. Then you look at the counter and it clicks.

“Vriska,” you say sternly as you step into the room. Gamzee lurks in the shadows behind you, watching with interest. One of the cabinets opens, and with a petulant, slightly guilty face Vriska slips out. She’s walking oddly, her single remaining arm curled around her middle, and you know she’s deliberately trying to appear innocent and guilty, appealing to your conscience. Hard-ass soldier or no, you’ve always been gullible, even more so when it comes to a pretty faces and women.

“Hand it over,” you tell her as forcefully as you dare to, and you think you might have come off a little too angry because she shrinks back and bares her fangs at you and you think it might be genuine. It’s hard to tell with Vriska, she knows how to work people’s feelings and thoughts into her advantage better than she knows herself, and she rarely opts out of using the skill when she deems it applicable. You’d hold it against her, but she’s small and scarred and scared and they don’t make prosthetic arms for trolls and it’s hard to hold a grudge over a few stolen quarters when you remember this little girl was pitted against trolls twice her size once, and that she’ll always carry the marks it left on her with her. 

She inches towards your outstretched hand and, with some fumbling, drops your wallet in your palm. You think it’s because she must have seen the betting pools at the fighter pits they kept her and Gamzee at when they were younger that she is so drawn to money. Maybe she’s trying to figure out what’s so great about that stuff that they’d do such awful things to a bunch of baby-trolls. Maybe you’re just reading too much into it.

You pat her on the shoulder, trying to show you’re not mad. Vriska is more receptive to physical contact than Gamzee ever has been and on some days she’s downright clingy, but you must have spooked her because she’s staring up at you suspiciously.  


Not sure what else you can do to make her stop thinking you’re about to plan her demise or somesuch you waddle over to the kitchen counter and begin rummaging through the cabinets for something edible that won’t take approximately more time than you want to stick into anything right now. You settle on a bag of chips you didn’t even know you had, and you’re just about to open it when you become very aware of two pairs of eyes transfixed on your back.

With a deep, theatrically exaggerated sigh you pour the chips into a bowl. You know you’re supposed to be more consistent, be more responsible. Instead you wave it off and move on because you can only be dad or owner or caretaker or whatever you are to these guys half the time. The other half you’re just a person, some soldier who went to war and got an honorable discharge because his stomach got shot to the likeness of swiss cheese when he didn’t notice the twelve-years-old with the stolen M240.

You pour yourself a glass of milk, then pick up the bowl and head over to the couch and put it in your lap. Vriska wastes no time in curling up next to you and stuffing a handful of chips into her mouth, looking up at you with wide, accusing eyes as if daring you to pull the bowl away from her. Gamzee settles down on the other side of you, much more calmly. You’re still not sure what he was looking for earlier but he seems content now, languidly stretching out over the cushions.

You turn on the TV and it’s still shitty three am television and all three of you should be sleeping, but you decide not to make an issue out of it.You all have nightmares, and none of you dares to talk about it. Instead you sit on the couch and eat chips and watch television in the middle of the night. Thats all right. It might not be entirely okay, but it works and that’s more than good enough for you.

You like to think it’s good enough for them too.


End file.
